Realization: Katara realizes her feelings
by snactres
Summary: From Katara's perspective. Illustrates the point in the tea shop at the end of the series, when she's trying to find Aang. Kataang content. Rated T just to be on the safe side, but nothing coarse at all. First fanfic, please review!
1. Updatesintro

UPDATE:Thanks for the reviews

_**UPDATE:**_Thanks for the reviews! I've decided to go back and do a character's POV for every episode. Not very original, but between lab work I have during the week and handing out samples of soy milk on weekends, I need some kind of escape. Requests are definitely considered, so write me or leave a comment in the review section! Thanks again!

"Realization: Katara Realizes Her Feelings" will be moved to the last chapter in the story. Sorry about the renovations and thank you for reading and commenting!


	2. Book 1 ch 1: The boy in the iceberg

**Update: Here's Book 1, Chapter 1: The boy in the iceberg. I used Katara's perspective again, using first person. I had to go out of state for work and I need some rest, but I'll continue the story tomorrow! Thanks again and stay tuned!**

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Ever since my mother died, I don't think I've ever felt like a girl. I look at my Gran-Gran and she looks at me and I have a feeling she suspects I feel older than she does. I don't know much, my water bending is enough to perform a couple tricks for the younger kids in the water tribe. Maybe enough to make chores a bit easier. But nothing special.

I've always respected my brother, Sokka, for being a soldier and protector of our tribe, our family, before he became a man. Most of the time he's an idiot, but it's not like any of us know what we're doing. We're just glad to get by everyday. I might sound like a cynic, but inside, I know something is going to happen. I refuse to believe that there's nothing out there.

We were foraging for food among the icebergs, hoping to catch some of the striped seals. Sokka is trying to teach me how to catch a fish. I'm trying hard not to snort, he may be two years older chronologically but he's two years younger in mental aptitude. I know, I'm grumpy today but can you imagine the disappointment in the faces of everyone when we come back without any food? To forgo that, I'm willing to forgo a week of food.

Sokka leans in and tells me, "It's not getting away from me this time. Watch and learn, Katara. This is how you catch a fish." I'm trying to catch a fish myself, my way. It's worth a shot. I remove my glove and reach my hand out. It's hard to describe what waterbending is, it's like you're touching the water even though physically there's something in between you, like the air. It's like the water is connected to the nerve synapses in your brain. It's like your body is the water and the water is you and you don't understand why everyone else isn't like this. I breathe in and I try to take a ball of water out of the ocean with my bending. It's still a difficult task for me, using all of my concentration to bend the water, bending it to my will. Even controlling it with the finest muscles I didn't even know existed before, like the fine muscles in my forehead, is a constant frustration. Suddenly, I feel contact with the water and I manage to pull out a ball of water with a fish! I'm elated and I tell Sokka to look at what I've done.

He just shushes me, "Shh, Katara, you're gonna scare it away. Mmm, I can already smell it cookin'!" Oh, great, all he can think of is food. Sometimes I wonder if he'll eat me when he's forced to resort to cannibalism. This is disgusting, my own thoughts disgust me, and I'm starting to lose control of the water. I want my brother to see my accomplishment, so I tell him, "But Sokka, I caught one!" It's getting wobbly and I equate the feeling to running down a hill and knowing you're about to fall, but you only have two choices: to keep on running and gain momentum or to give up and fall down. The water ball floats closer to Sokka and he raises his spear to pierce a fish, but he strikes too far up. Dolt. The ball is burst and the fish escapes its doom in Sokka's stomach. Maybe like the reverse Jonah and the whale? Sokka gets wet and it's bust.

"Hey!," I exclaim.

"Ugh, why is it that every time you play with magic water I get soaked?"

Oh, of course, now it's my fault. It's not magic. It's waterbending, and it's—

"Yeah, yeah. An ancient art unique to our culture, blah blah blah. Look, I'm just saying that if I had weird powers, I'd keep my weirdness to myself."

Look at him! He looks down on _me_. He's not even listening to me me, he's just looking at himself in the water, a regular Narcissus. If only magic was real. "You're calling me weird? I'm not the one who makes muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water."

**TO BE CONTINUED SOON! I will complete the story tomorrow.**


	3. Realization: Katara's point of view

**This will be my last chapter, and I'll definitely fix it, but probably only when I'm approaching the last couple of chapters. Thanks!**

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The war was over. They were enjoying tea in Iroh's tea shop, it was almost like it was another world. Katara was looking around, remembering that Aang was here just a second ago. She walked out into the courtyard, remembering what had happened when they were outside during the Ember Island play, recoiling when he had kissed her.

She was ready. Before she had been ashamed that she had a crush a younger boy, pushing her feelings away and telling herself that he was just a friend. That was hardly the case. He could be an ordinary boy, and she would still love him. When she discovered him frozen in ice, they looked into each other's eyes and she knew that he was what she was always waiting for. He was hardly ordinary, the world had been waiting for him for a century. When his gray eyes opened and she looked into him, she felt a tender, longing feeling to protect and to take care of him, but also to watch him fulfill his destiny as the avatar. In the deepest part of her, she thought he was going to ask her to marry him when he first spoke, and when he asked her to go penguin sledding, she loved him even more. Ever since the day the Southern Raiders came and ambushed her tribe, her mother, her life, she became a proxy mother to her brother and the children in her tribe. She forgot how to have fun until Aang came. But another part of her was also embarrassed and hurt that she was expecting something else to come out of his mouth. She tucked this part away and kept on reminding herself that she was just a mother or older sister to him. He was younger and shorter than her by a couple of inches.

Over time, she saw how he looked at her. The times that they had kissed, she blushed, her face betraying her feelings. When he fell at Azula's hands in Ba Sing Se, her heart fell, too. She thought she'd lost him. When she wept with him in her arms, she wasn't crying for the loss of the world. She was crying for his hurt, and for her need of him. She'd lost her mother and she couldn't lose him. She'd gotten too close.

When he asked her how she felt during the play, she wanted to tell him how she felt but she was just too embarrassed. Those were dangerous times and she was too afraid of something happening to him during the fight with Souzin. She just wasn't ready to lose him again. The look of pure hurt on his face hurt her just as much when she pulled away and yelled at him.

Now she was approaching him in the courtyard. He was younger than her by two years and she was almost embarrassed by the admiration she had for him. He was a boy yet he was from another time and culture, at the same time a man. But that didn't matter, it never had—she had just used it as an excuse to brush off her feelings. When their eyes met she knew that he understood how she felt, that she was ready to experience the love he had for her. She was ready to love him in the way he deserved.

She smiled and reached to him in an embrace. He smelled good, he always did—like sandalwood and his own scent. She wondered if she was enough for him, he could wield all the power in the world, he had thousands of years of experience, he could have anyone. They parted and she looked into his gentle gray eyes, the blue tattoos of an airbender on him. She wondered how much they hurt during the application process, all the hurt he had endured. He missed out on a lifetime of being a normal boy in exchange for the guilt of outliving his people, frozen during the genocide of the airbenders. Yet he still had the capacity to love her, with all her baggage. And then she understood: it wasn't that they had both experienced genocide and the burden of element bending on their shoulders. You really don't choose who you fall in love with, they both instantly knew it when they met each other. Aang was wise enough to realize it, but she dismissed it. Now she knew.

She leaned in and kissed him. They wrapped their arms around each other. He felt so good to touch and she knew that she would live another lifetime in the war just to find him again.

"I loved you when you woke me up," said Aang when they released each other. "It felt like just hours that I found out I was to be transferred and I ran away from my duties. Imagine the irony in my facing the possible end of the world," he laughed nervously.

"I loved you, too, at first sight. I was just too foolish to know it, so can I make it up to you from now on?" Katara responded tenderly.

"Will you be with me for the rest of my life? My incarnations are over, I've achieved balance and so has the world. The world doesn't need another avatar, my life is my own to claim. I know—I know this sounds silly, but I feel like this is the one life where we meet and get to grow old together like normal people, or as normal as we can be," he exclaimed.

"Of course I will. I want to grow up and grow old with you. We're both so young, we have so much time," Katara paused as his face fell a little. "But life is short. It's fleeting, and I've thought so many times that I had lost you. Look, you're already as tall as me!" she laughed as Aang blushed and tried to step on his toes a little.

"Just watch, I'll grow to be taller than Kyoshi!" He grabbed her by the waist, and spread out his glider. "Hang on to my shoulders!" They flew out to watch the sunset, never worrying about what to fear, because it was now a happier, quieter time.


End file.
